Daily Archives: October 3, 2011

There is no better excuse to dictate policy than crisis. Our founders knew the propensity of humans to dictate their will through group think in emotional situations. The founders feared and despised central rule by a King and were determined in the constitution to protect against both dictatorship and group or mob rule.

We are starting to hear politicians that are responsible for creating the current economic mess (chaos) talking about suspending democratic rule. First, we are not a democracy but what they are suggesting is we the people be stripped of our right to vote in or out our representatives to the federal government. These are not fringe lunatics that hold no power; they are a current congress woman and the governor of North Carolina. Their argument is that elected politicians can’t do what they want for fear of being voted out next election. My question is if they are in fear of being voted out of office by their constituents then the policies they are pursuing may be the problem. The reason our representative government does work is that representatives must face re-election every two years.

The mission of Oath Keepers fits hand in glove with those in support of the Constitution. They urge active duty military and police to remember that their oath is to the Constitution, not to whoever happens to be “the decider” in the White House (of whatever party). And that oath to defend the Constitution requires that they defend the separation of powers between the federal government and the states, and defend the powers reserved to the states and to the people, as the Tenth Amendment makes clear.

It is no accident that within their “Declaration of Orders We Will Not Obey” they vow to refuse orders to enter into a state with force, for any reason, unless, and until, invited in by that state’s legislature, or by the governor if the legislature cannot be convened, as required by Article IV, Section IV of the Constitution (known as the “Republican Government” clause).

Nor will they obey orders to subjugate a state that asserts its sovereignty and nullifies unconstitutional federal laws, or orders to impose “martial law” on the American people (a power nowhere granted, or even mentioned, in our Constitution).

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It seems the word equality is used so many times that seems to shape the very debate of our modern political thinking. The writer of this article (http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/08/mills.debt.dream/index.html?iref=allsearch), Nicolaus Mill, wants to leave the impression that America was founded on the idea of establishing a egalitarian society but that is false. Its easy to take to take the same word and use one its synonyms in order to leave the impression you want on a reader and the impression this article leaves is that the founders were trying to establish some kind of egalitarian society. The manor in how this one word is used seems to mean so much in our modern political debate that it seems to alter the entire debate itself. A good example is how conservatives try to twist egalitarian equality around in order to destroy its socialist implications but if they actually understood how it was used originally in the Declaration of Independence we would not have to do that.

The actual title of this article is correct in that America was not necessarily founded on the idea of wealth accumulation but on equality but this article’s use of the word equality was not how it was used in the Declaration of Independence. In order to understand the original meaning of the word equality we have to understand the historical influences that shaped the thinking of Thomas Jefferson.